Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Nixon's Crimes are Now Legal

In last week's Black Agenda Report I commented on the ever expanding surveillance state brought to us by Barack Obama. There is now a dangerous bipartisan consensus in support of the further erosion of our civil liberties. Don't believe me? Just read these words from Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon papers forty years ago.

"Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life. (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)

He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.

That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst's office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to "incapacitate me totally" (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama's executive orders. they have all become legal."Contrast Ellsberg's treatment with tht of Bradley Manning, who is accused of giving government secrets to Wikileaks. Ellsberg's conviction was over turned while Manning has been imprisoned, tortured psychologically, and denied the right to have private visits. In essence, Obama is now worse than Richard Nixon.

Margaret Kimberley

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